Writing Analytics

After listening to the interview with Sam Parr on the podcast, I decided to put more text on the Writing Analytics landing page.

Sam talks about the effectiveness of long-form content when selling, and after hearing that interview, I started seeing it everywhere.

I'm planning to add more content (or maybe more sections) that goes into detail about different features.

What do you think about long-form sales pages vs the common SaaS landing pages?

When I launched earlier this year, Writing Analytics was a writing tracker. The idea was to visualise progress to keep writers motivated while working on projects that can take months or years to complete. Think Fitbit for your writing routine.

A few weeks after the launch, the UK went into lockdown. If you wanted pasta for dinner, you were out of luck because it was sold out everywhere. Let's not talk about the toilet paper situation.

It didn't feel right to keep marketing the product, so I made it free for two months and went back to the basement to work on more features.

Originally, I wasn't going to build an editor until way later, certainly not in 2020. I wanted to focus on the analytics engine.

I'm glad I changed my mind.

Most conventional text editors focus on document formatting – making sure the font is right, and the margins look good.

The Writing Analytics editor is designed to help you write. To beat distractions and get your words done. And to create a sustainable writing routine.

There aren’t any documents in Writing Analytics. The editor manages your work in sessions instead. A session is a timed, focused writing sprint. Behind the scenes, it tracks your progress, how many words you’re adding, deleting. It even tracks your focus and will let you know when you switched to another window and got distracted.

At the end of a session, you’ll have a draft. You can either start a new session and revise it or export the copy for formatting and publication.

I've been using it to write every day for the past few weeks, and it almost quadrupled the number of words that I get done. It's insane.

I'm looking forward to seeing this in the hands of a lot more people.

https://www.writinganalytics.co/posts/introducing-the-editor/

Many companies that I look up to (Scribd, Ahrefs or JSTOR), made their services free to support people through the outbreak. I took advantage of a number of such deals myself.

I decided to make Writing Analytics free until the end of May 2020 to support writers that might be struggling to keep their creative projects going through the months of self-isolation to come.

https://www.writinganalytics.co/posts/covid-19/

After months of coding, Writing Analytics launches on Product Hunt today! If you’re on on there, I’d love to hear your thoughts here:

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/writing-analytics

I also wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone for contributing to the site! This is my first indie business, and I’ve learned a ton from reading everyone's milestones and listening to so many thoughtful interviews on the podcast.

I’m hoping that as my project exits the basement stage, I’ll be able to share more of what I’ve learned working as an Indie Hacker :).

(Also, if Writing Analytics sounds interesting, you’ll get a lifetime 20% off if you sign up over the next couple of days or so.)

Originally, I chose to require credit card upfront when signing users up for a free trial. This was mainly to save time when implementing the billing integration.

Now it became clear that it really wasn’t the right choice for my product. I don’t have any per-user setup costs (spinning up extra servers, environments etc). And the value of having a Writing Analytics account grows over time – if someone signs up for a new account every two weeks with a disposable email, they won’t get the benefits.

There really isn’t any reason why I shouldn’t let people engage with the app for free to establish trust and better understand the product.

Yesterday, I moved things around, and users can now sign up for Writing Analytics without entering their payment details!

What’s your experience with card upfront vs card at the end of free trial?

After a few months of development, I'm finally getting ready to share Writing Analytics with a wider audience. I've been building software for years, so although the coding phase was exhausting, it was a pretty efficient process.

This is my first solo product launch – I'm excited but also figuring a lot of things as I go. Building Writing Analytics was fun. Making it work will be the real challenge.